


all the things that will be lost now

by freneticfloetry



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eliot Waugh's Mind Palace, Escape from the Happy Place, Inspired by Taylor Swift, M/M, Memory Magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:29:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29115279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freneticfloetry/pseuds/freneticfloetry
Summary: Bravery doesn't come free. For Eliot, the price he pays to find answers might just mean losing himself.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 47
Kudos: 45
Collections: It Always Leads to You





	1. and i was catching my breath

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by _evermore_ (the album in general, and the song specifically). Welcome to the Happy Place, population Eliot. The nucleus of this idea has had its hooks in me for awhile now, and this song (and event) came along just in time to cement it in my brain. The plan is to update weekly. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed plotting it out.
> 
> Endless thanks and tentacles to [Rubi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubick) and [hoko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoko_onchi) for being the best cheer readers and cheerleaders a girl could have.

There's an endless instant in the grey, straddling the line between sun-bright freedom at his back and the cage of darkness up ahead, when Eliot thinks of his grandmother. Of her papery hands plucking herbs from the planter in her kitchen window, pressing the leaves between her fingers to release the fragrant oils and passing the sprig beneath his nose like a feather.

"Rosemary," she'd said, like Ophelia before her. "For remembrance."

Then he crosses the threshold, and it all fades away.

For someone who is essentially a figment of Eliot's imagination, Charlton bleeds a hell of a lot.

Eliot had patched the wound with supplies from the first aid kit in the kitchen and one of Todd's cheap Target towels — this is an _incredibly_ detailed mind prison — but the stain is still slowly growing when he drags himself away from the door and drops down to the opposite sofa with a groan.

He'd found the exit. He'd made it out. Pushed his body to move through the ache in every one of his muscles — the monster is in desperate need of a multivitamin — and said the magic words. And even through the overwhelming exhaustion, the sense of relief had been stronger. He'd been _high_ , just shy of euphoric, his nerve endings alight at the sheer sight of Quentin Coldwater, in the flesh and mere feet away, looking like he'd seen a ghost and longed to be haunted.

But Eliot is well aware what a comedown feels like, and holy shit, is he crashing.

"Okay, Jiminy Cricket," he sighs, "any idea what the hell we do now?"

"I would suggest a fresh towel," Charlton answers, and frowns down at the terrycloth mess around his abdomen. "Though I suppose I could share mine, there must be a clean corner..."

"Charlton," Eliot cuts in wearily, "are you delirious?"

Charlton pauses, considering, then looks around as if he's paranoid. "Not... that I know of."

"Then what the actual fuck are you talking about?"

"Your nose," he says, waving his hand in front of his own face. "Surely you need a towel as well, since the both of us seem to be bleeding?"

Eliot's fingers fly up to swipe at the skin above his lip, and his hand shakes when it comes away red, settled into the swirls of his fingerprints. He registers the taste of it then, the sharp tang of iron on his tongue.

Jesus, he hasn't had a nosebleed since his brain tossed a bus at his childhood bully.

There's a stack of cocktail napkins on the bar shelves behind his head, and he folds one over his forefinger and wipes away the evidence, hoping it isn't some sort of sign that he'd failed spectacularly.

Maybe it's just karma catching up, now that he has nowhere left to run. The universe, saying _payback is a bitch_. _A plague on all your button-downs._

He crumples the napkin in his fist and tosses it aside. Across the coffee table, Charlton shifts, clearly uncomfortable but still attempting to be helpful.

"Perhaps we could watch _Lost_ again?"

Unbridled hedonism has its limits. Even for Eliot Waugh.

Time actually _is_ an illusion in here; the clocks don't tick forward, just have hands that shift to the second that the start of a memory dictates and turn until it's time to move on to the next. And it isn't all orgies and blowouts and snorting coke off some Illusionist's abs. Sometimes it's lounging in the window seat with Margo or listening to Q ramble from a dining room chair, or just lying on a sofa between them while they lob points back and forth over his head at a level of geek he never quite reached.

His happy place in his Happy Place.

Times like those, it's easy to see how this whole thing would work. How it's the perfect prison, designed to lull him into a false sense of security. Were it not for the acute awareness of his non-consensual possession, courtesy of Casper the friendly stowaway, he might be more than content to while away his days here forever.

But there are only so many ways he can replay the walking blooper reel that is Todd, and reliving his greatest hookup hits gets real awkward real fast with Charlton as a shadow.

Eliot is sipping a sloe gin fizz with a perfectly frothy egg white — Margo's feet in his lap and Quentin's spine in his side and the two of them arguing about whether or not the talking animals in Fillory fucked their garden variety counterparts, a relic from a scheduled rain day the fall of Q's first year — when he realizes what a waste this all is.

It'd be one thing if he was bored — what good booze and a willing body can't fix, they can sure as hell make him forget for a while. But this isn't boredom, this is _stasis_. Captivity. He's an ant in a tiny toy farm, endlessly crawling through the same trails, shifting the same specks of sand. Collected and preserved here in this pantomime, this slice of a life cycle, but no different than any other dead bug pinned under glass.

But he looks at them both, Quentin's flying hands and impassioned frustration, Margo's half-painted nails and strategic nonchalance, and it clicks. He's not wasting _time_ , time doesn't exist here. He's wasting _resources_.

They've been here all along, these amber-trapped projections of these two precious people. He'd tunneled through the deepest, darkest corners of his mind to dig his way out, to let them know there's still enough of him to need saving. But just because he's back in the box doesn't mean they can't help him here, too.

What would Q and Bambi do?

Quentin, who'd saved Alice from spending eternity as a Niffin, who'd been ready to sign away his own eternity to save magic for the world. Margo, who'd saved Fillory from itself without even trying, who'd saved him from himself multiple times over.

His Bambi, his Q, his _perfect fucking people_ … they would sure as shit try to save themselves.

So that's what he'll do. Be brave, before he ever gets out of here.

An idea comes to him like lightning in a bottle, one that's not unlike any other plan they've ever had — risky as hell, potentially rewarding beyond reason, and realistically the only option he has.

He runs a thumb across Margo's calf and a hand through Quentin's hair, then blinks them both away.

"Charlton," he calls, looking over to the low-slung denim chair where his only actual cellmate is nursing a sad Shirley Temple. "Before, you said… you can get to _any_ memory?"

"I would like to state, for the record, that this is a terrible idea."

Eliot snorts into his drink. "Probably. But we never seem to have any other kind, so why break with tradition now?"

Charlton keeps pacing, his handwringing almost audible. "Need I remind you what fate befell the knight Ora when she refused to remain within the safety of her own sanctuary?"

"Flesh rent, face ripped off, I remember the gist. The thing is…" Eliot leans forward, hands hanging over his knees. "It's the 'sanctuary' part that's the _point_ , Charlton. When it comes to this whole Occupy Eliot operation, this corner of my mind is the only place I'm still myself. So everything out there must be the Monster. And if you can get to my memories, logic says that I can get to his."

"I'm not entirely sure logic is your strong suit."

The memory sweeps in uninvited, a rundown shack and a square of scattered tiles and Quentin's stubborn storm cloud of an expression. _Just… logic this with me for one second_.

Eliot swallows, shaking the thought away. "Maybe not," he says, and turns to his latest conjuring for backup. "But it is hers."

There are Alice Quinns elsewhere in his head who have never looked at him this way, wary and resentful and an inch away from flinching, but they'd all dried up at the end of Margo's mattress and died with the body he'd buried. This version — perched on the edge of the coffee table in full which-witch-built-Blackspire research mode, mouth tight and arms crossed, nose twitching every now and then — has never been his biggest fan, but she's the one he needs at the moment.

Besides, knowing what she'd been planning at this point in time, remembering what she'd done next, the feeling is more than mutual.

"I agree with Eliot," she says, and manages not to choke on it in the process. "All of this is a construct built to contain his consciousness. If he leaves this space without his own memories as a reference, in theory, he should be able to explore what is essentially the Monster's mind."

Eliot spreads his hands, because _I told you so_ would only sound ignorant in the wake of all of Alice's evidentiary thought.

"That's hardly a foolproof argument," Charlton says, crossing his arms one way and then the other. "This place is _your_ mind. For all we know she could simply… be telling you what you want to hear."

"Yeah," Eliot scoffs, "because that's _exactly_ what Alice Quinn would do." Still, the man has a point. Do the people he pulls from memory exist as they are, or only as he perceives them? Can they actually think for themselves, somehow, or are they limited to what he _thinks_ they would think? _How the fuck does all of this even work?_ "You know what, the bottom line is, I can't just sit here mentally masturbating until the cavalry rides to my rescue. I have to do _something_ , Charlton."

"You found your door. You were able to inform your friends that you're alive. Was that not something?"

He could counter with explanations of caution; the desire to paint a full picture of the threat, the pull of building a backup plan. But he thinks of what Quentin and Margo would do in his place — the limbs they would walk and the leaps they would take, just to know that they'd done everything they could — and simply shakes his head.

"Not enough."

Charlton lets loose a long-suffering sigh. "Well," he sniffs, "if you absolutely insist on seeing this through… then I suppose you'll need additional assistance."

The occasion calls for one of his favorite Mission Quentins: the one he'd taken to hunt down hedges hoarding a stolen Brakebills book. He beams into the common room looking bewildered, messenger bag slung over his shoulder and cardboard box in his arms.

"Awww," Eliot says, hand over heart, "you come with _accessories_."

He's treated to two seconds of frazzled and frankly adorable scowling before the lovelorn tome inside tries to fly the coop, and he takes the shaking box and turns to shove it into Charlton's hands.

"Since you've opted out of the action, you get to booksit," he says, and spins back to Q. " _You_ … well, I need your help. Again."

 _Highest priority_ , he almost adds, just to make the callback complete. _Life or death_. Instead, he smooths Quentin's collar and explains the situation, wishing he could smooth the furrow between his brows as well. But this is baby Q, before the worst of the Beast, before setting foot in Fillory, before being betrayed by his best friend and trapped in his worst nightmare — they'd bonded fast, but their lines hadn't been quite as blurry, back then.

Quentin shoves his hair behind one ear, and between the motion and the look on his face — wary but willing, and a little wondrous around the edges — Eliot almost believes this is real.

"So… you need me to be a distraction."

Eliot smiles. "Well, you are distracting." He shifts his hands to Quentin's shoulders; shoulders were safe at this stage. Both of them were still his, even. "What I need is as much time as you can manage. Can you lead the creatures elsewhere in my memory, preferably one that isn't completely mortifying on a personal level? _Oh_ , try the corn maze, Halloween 2006. Plenty of places to hide, plus my first dick sighting in the wild. Happy birthday to me."

He's seen these same features every day for fifty years and change, but Q is still capable of pulling faces indecipherable to even Eliot.

"Yeah," Q kind of laughs, "I'll… try that, then."

Eliot pats his cheek. "Go bravely," he says, and sends him on his way.

In his wake, Charlton is still struggling to keep the box in check. "Are you sure you want to do this?" he says, looking vaguely motion sick. "We could —"

" _We are not watching fucking Lost again_ , Charlton." Pulling in a deep breath, Eliot puts a hand on the doorknob. "They may have gotten stuck in purgatory, but I will not be doing the same."

Then he closes his eyes, thinks _show me how the Monster ended up in Castle Blackspire_ , and opens the goddamn door.

Holy shit, it _worked_.

Eliot spills into a shadowed hallway, torchlight flickering across the walls every few feet. It takes a moment to get his bearings, partly because Blackspire is a mirror image of the castle he calls home — everything is backwards and all his references are reversed — but mostly because of the _screaming_.

He's in the dungeons.

Not the holding cells, meant for short stays or shows of strength — the decently-sized spaces with a bed on one wall and another completely barred, built to house the vagabonds who need a warning or the visiting 'dignitaries' who need a lesson in diplomacy or the village idiots who just need to sleep it off — but the _dungeons_ , little rooms locked behind heavy doors, with a slot just large enough to slide a plate under and a window too small to let in any real light. Just thinking about them, he's tempted to scream, himself.

But he's _being brave_ , and all that jazz, so he actually has to head _toward_ said screaming.

He makes his way down the hall, bearing left where Whitespire veers right, and makes his way past the first pair of doors. There are things living behind them, if you can call it that — hulking shapes that aren't quite human.

Charlton was right. This is a _terrible_ idea.

Something growls from the door on one side as he creeps by, a claw-tipped hand slides out of the slot from the other, and somehow they both seem like better options than what waits at the end of the passage: four hooded figures, dragging the howling shape of a man whose every inch drips with black blood. A man he knows.

 _Jesus,_ he'd been trapped here since the beginning.

Another figure steps out of the shadows, smaller and slighter than the others, and he knows this one as well — the knight, Ora.

Who's still in full possession of her face, so, at least there's that.

But the Monster is still screaming in Charlton's hoarse voice, the same word over and over again — _where, where, where —_ and only stops when Ora reaches out to wipe the tears streaking through the spattered mess on his skin.

"I have come to stay with you," she says softly, and slides her hand into his tangled hair. "I know this is new, and you may be afraid, but we shall face it together. We can make a game of it. I think everything is more fun when you do it with a friend."

She tilts her head, smiles, the tenderness so at odds with her armor.

"What say you, love? Will you play with me?"

Yep, that was just about enough bravery for one day.

"Before you ask," Eliot says, pushing off the door, "that time totally worked."

Charlton looks up expectantly from his spot on the sofa, holding a red-streaked towel to his nose, and Eliot stops in his tracks.

"For fuck's sake, you can't _always_ be bleeding."

"I'm sorry," he says, slightly muffled. "The box grew restless so I set the book free, and in its haste to escape, it… _flew…_ " His free hand flutters toward his head. "Into my face."

Eliot shuts his eyes and shakes his head. "Of course it did. But if a gaping hole to the gut didn't kill you, I'm sure you'll survive a freak attack from a flying book." He crosses to the chalkboard and flips the frame to the empty side, trying to capture the highlights before he forgets. "Look alive, Charlton. We've got work to do."

 _FOUR HOODSMAN OF THE APOCALYPSE_ , he scrawls out in block letters, and then, just below it, _BLACK BLOOD — SIGNIFICANT?_

Charlton steps to his side, sniffing and scrunching his nose and wincing as if he regrets doing either. "Now that you've found whatever answers you were looking for —"

"I didn't find answers, I found your old pal Ora, her four hooded henchmen, and what looked like the most fucked up secret society initiation in history." _And you_ , he almost says, though it's not entirely accurate. Charlton hadn't been present for that; he'd been locked away in his own head, in a place very much like this one. "I mean it. Wildly disturbing. We may need to rethink how we kick off The Trials."

He crosses his arms and considers the board, pressing the end of the chalk to the cleft in his chin, and feels a wisp of a shiver up his spine. _Déjà vu._

"These aren't answers, Charlton, they're questions. They're _breadcrumbs_. And I need to figure out how they all line up and follow them the hell out of my head."

"But… as I understood it, the goal was to alert your friends that you are in need of aid, so that _they_ may free you of the Monster. What help can you possibly be from here?"

"I can figure out what the fuck they're _dealing with_ ," Eliot exclaims. "What _we're_ dealing with. Because —"

All at once his head is spinning, _swimming_ , some shrill blare of feedback echoing between his ears. It stops as suddenly as it started, and he comes back to himself with Charlton's hands on his elbows and Charlton's voice repeating his name.

"Eliot," it says — _where, where, where_ — as the hands shake him again. " _Eliot._ "

"Yeah." He swallows, and for a second, the sound is muffled and amplified, as if he's underwater. "I'm good."

"You are clearly nothing of the sort. Which just proves that this plan of yours, this reckless course of action —"

"We're _doing this_ , Charlton." He pulls himself free, backing up to put a few feet between them, his left hand a stiff fist around the chalk. "This is what we're doing. This is the only plan. So you can get on board, or you can get the hell out."

Charlton seems to deflate for a moment. Then he draws himself up straighter, sniffs with a little nod and nary a wince, and crosses his arms just a little petulantly over his chest. "Fine. If you insist. But I do hope your other memories of Quentin are more like the first, the one who once fought with currency. This last one with the box wasn't particularly friendly, and neither was the book he held hostage."

As a rule, Eliot only understands about half of the things that come out of Charlton's mouth. But for the first time, he's completely stumped from beginning to end.

"I'm sorry," he says, "with the _what_ , now?"


	2. i rewind the tape but all it does is pause

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greetings! This update is somewhat of a belated birthday gift for my beloved hoko, who will be responsible for this fic's song and concept twin. Truth be told, I don't even know how to warn for this chapter. There's an incident of homophobic language directed at a queer character. There's definitely an injury (non-graphic, but blood is mentioned more than once). There's character death as a concept? If you'd like specifics, my Tumblr is linked in the end notes. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy!

"Okay, stop."

Charlton halts mid-pace and mid-explanation, eyebrows up and expectant. "Sorry, I'm unclear — would you like me to stop talking or to stop moving?"

"Let's start with _both_ and go from there." Eliot pulls in a deep breath and massages his forehead with the pads of his fingers. "You're saying there was another Quentin here before. Not the ones I've been conjuring all over the Cottage for my own personal amusement, but… a Quentin who went out there with me."

"Yes. He accompanied us to several of your traumatic remembrances, clad in a pair of the chair trousers and some sort of shirt made of squares."

"The _chair_ —" Eliot laughs without humor, glancing at the piece of patchwork furniture. "Ah. Well, that could be Quentin at almost any point in recorded time, so. Doesn't exactly narrow things down."

"But… surely the duel you previously mentioned provides some insight," Charlton says, nonsensical. "Is it not the lowest denomination in your currency?"

"Oh my god," Eliot groans, "it's like playing Clue with a medieval Muppet." Then he rolls his eyes and bites back a groan — he's not sure what it says about him that it suddenly makes sense, but it can't be anything good. "When did Quentin ever _fight_ _Penny_?"

Charlton pulls his features together, almost as confused as Eliot is but concentrating hard enough to sprain something. "That wasn't clear. Perhaps the battle of Welters that saw your friend Margo captain the charge, and the lady Fen wield her knives against pirates?"

Everything in Eliot goes cold.

Since they've been trapped here together, he's had at least fifty different Margos traipsing through his head — queen bitch and High King, crazy night out and cozy night in, hard-as-nails and surprisingly soft and her fascinating combination of both. But Welters Margo is far from his favorite flavor; he hasn't been desperate enough for her to make an appearance. Not yet, at least.

And he's never, ever brought up Fen. Not in any sense of the word.

He remembers regional Welters his first year, when Margo had struck fear in the hearts of all present, including her fellow teammates, their type-A captain, and one particular teacher she'd threatened with castration over the exaggerated ticking of his cheap watch. He distinctly remembers the most recent Welters world tournament, hosted right here at Brakebills — one does not simply forget ping-ponging between bodies to have threesome-adjacent sex on two separate planets at once. He even remembers explaining the concept of the game to a curious Quentin.

 _There aren't enough noble quests to go around_. If only that had actually been the case.

Now here he is, a quest to kill the Beast and a quest to save Fillory and a quest to restore magic later, and he's locked in his own head with the ghost of a guy he technically killed and a great big blank spot where Bambi the Welters captain should apparently be. Likewise, Fen brings to mind a similar void — the knives are omnipresent, but the pirates could only have happened on the Muntjac, when the record skips straight from Fen following Fray around like a fucking shadow to Fen fleeing from cannibals in the Neitherlands, nary a pirate to be found.

And as for Quentin… racking his brain for their earliest interactions, Eliot vividly remembers sharing the sad tale of Logan Kinnear, then Q coming to stay at the Cottage for good. But there's nothing of substance in between, just dead air and static and a void of space and time.

Something is spectacularly wrong with him. Something besides the obvious.

"Charlton," he says, "you mentioned a box, before."

Charlton nods. "That contained a flying book. It's —" He spins around in a slow circle, another, then cranes over the sofa to look behind the back. The whole thing would be downright comical if Eliot's insides weren't currently flooded with ice-cold panic. "Well it _was_ right here."

"Forget it," Eliot mutters, and snorts out a laugh at the irony. He doesn't need to see the evidence — he can picture the box, and the book it had held. He'd been panicked then, too, though it pales in comparison. Back when his biggest worry in the world was that the powers that be would put an end to PKC parties for good.

He'd held that box in his own hands, set it down on the dining room table and listened to the book inside bounce around in distress.

Then it's as if he'd blinked and he was right here — sitting in this spot on this sofa sometime long after sundown, sipping a questionable Cabernet while Quentin whined about… _whatever_ had happened with Julia. It's more than a little like dream space, the way you can't recall how or when you got somewhere, you're just suddenly and inexplicably _there_.

Eliot springs to his feet, feeling like he might just jump out of his skin. He strides past a stunned-looking Charlton and into the foyer, thinking _Q and I get the stolen book back_ while he throws the door open, trying desperately to refresh his memory.

Outside, there is nothing but white.

"It would seem," Charlton says, brows drawn down and chin on his hand, "that the manifestations of your friends are somehow _missing_ from the memories they should inhabit."

"Gee, _you think_?"

Charlton cringes from his spot on the sofa, watching Eliot warily while he paces. Oh, how the tables have turned.

"It doesn't make sense," Eliot says, as evenly as he can manage. "I mean, how many different versions of Margo have I dreamed up more than once? The Post-Encanto 2015 model must've been here half a dozen times." For their final night in Ibiza he'd found her an ambidextrous massage therapist who also happened to be psychic and arranged for a _very_ happy ending, and by the time they got back, she'd been glowing and grateful for almost a week. As memory Margos go, that one's solidly in the top ten. "So they aren't _all_ being wiped from my mind, just —"

He freezes, fumbles, but Charlton's already picked up the ball and runs with it. "The ones you've enlisted for aid."

Eliot swallows, his eyes slipping slowly out of focus. "The ones that the creatures are killing."

"It's possible that the people you project from your memory are no different than your own consciousness," Charlton says. "That, should they succumb to the creatures here in your head, they simply… cease to be."

"Well that's just fucking fantastic," Eliot scoffs, swiping a hand down his face. It's a wonder that he can muster any surprise at all — at this point, what nightmare could be truly complete without Eliot Waugh sending the people he loves off to slaughter? "You're the resident possession expert, how the hell did you not know this?"

Charlton tilts his head, thoughtful and unfazed. "How would I remember if I had?" Then his face brightens, and he actually raises one finger in the air. "Could they merely be hidden, somehow?"

"Where the fuck would they be _hiding,_ Charlton, it's the goddamn _Matrix_ out there."

Sniffing, Charlton crosses his arms and settles back into the sofa. "All the more reason why your dogged determination to explore the Monster's mind is an altogether foolhardy endeavor."

Eliot hums and shakes his head, flashing him a strained smile. "I beg to differ. If the members of my memory support squad must be one time use only, that just means I have to choose them wisely."

After all, there are plenty of things — not to mention people — that he would rather not remember.

He takes a deep breath and tucks his hands into fists. It doesn't even call for a key this time.

"Jesus Christ, Eliot," a familiar voice sneers at his back. "Did you really bring me in here with one of your little boyfriends playing dress up? It's bad enough to guess the kinds of things you get up to, but I sure as hell don't need to see it firsthand."

All at once, the swell of panic subsides. This will work just fine. After a camp full of cannibals, what's a flesh-rending creature or two?

He spins from Charlton's clear confusion to face the hateful homophobe behind him.

"Hi, Dad," he says, a wildly different tone than the last time. "I can't believe I'm going to say these words with hell still so utterly unfrozen, but as it turns out… you may actually be good for something after all."

Samuel Waugh remains _spectacularly_ worthless.

To Eliot, at least. And since this place and everything therein is made up of nothing but, that's all that matters here, anyway.

There'd been more delightful fatherly denigration, followed by a frankly hostile exchange — he'd answered Eliot's _Be a good little font of childhood trauma and take the creatures for a ride through my root canal_ with _Since when you do give me orders, boy,_ and it had been all downhill from there — before Eliot had finally pulled the plug. It'd been about two minutes flat, but it felt like forever.

Charlton has been sitting stock still on the sofa since he'd waved his father away, wide eyed and appropriately horrified.

"Buck up, buttercup," Eliot says, patting his poor frozen face. "As I'm sure you'll now find completely understandable, some of us truly treasure the memory of the day that we left home." Nevertheless, he ducks around to the bar and grabs the nearest bottle — even the memory of that man can still drive him to drink. "Besides, I have a backup plan."

Said plan appears before them as Eliot pours, as if by magic, scowling around the room in all his tits-out glory.

"The _fuck_?"

Eliot smirks around his first sip of scotch. "Charlton, meet Penny."

"Penny is a _person_ ," Charlton says, still somewhat shellshocked. "Oh. Well, that makes considerably more sense."

"Funny how that works. This particular Penny once stormed our castle looking for Quentin-shaped damsels in distress."

He sinks to the arm of the sofa and crosses his legs, trying to ignore the fact that he no longer has any real frame of reference for _why_ , just a desperate-looking Julia and a Quentin on death's door, and the fast, furious, and possibly fictional tale he'd fed Fogg while they waited for Sleeping Beauty to wake the fuck up.

It's a strange sensation, this tabula rasa — Eliot's lied to himself a lot over the years, but at least he's always known the truth while he did it.

"So listen," he says, swirling the scotch in his tumbler, "as long as I have you here in full Prince Charming rescue mode, I find myself in need of your assistance."

"You're gonna find yourself with my foot up your ass if you don't let me the fuck out."

"Tempting as that may be, the latter is exactly what I'm trying to do." Eliot lays out a barebones sketch of the situation, then sips again, searching for the most innocuous memory he can manage — even an imaginary Penny doesn't need to know that he'd lost his virginity to a jock named _Jasper_. "Lead the creatures to opening night of my high school's _Les Mis_. You'll just have to cringe your way through Fantine, she took _sharp_ to a whole new level."

"Yeah, okay," Penny mutters, one eyebrow up. Then he snorts and shakes his head and walks away without another word.

Charlton stares after Penny as he stalks down the hall. "I don't think your backup plan is all too fond of the backup plan."

"Oh no," Eliot answers, "that's just Penny." He polishes off his drink and sets the tumbler down on the side table, sighing as he stands. "Okay, back to breadcrumbs."

"What are you going to do?"

Eliot walks to the door and takes a deep breath. "Find the next one in line, and work my way to some answers."

 _Show me the Monster before the Blackspire dungeons_ , he thinks, and turns the knob in his hand.

There's a world on the other side of the door this time, the only reason the castle's dark walls are a welcome sight. He's landed in the throne room this trip — magic bubbles from the backup spring a few feet away, glowing and free flowing, and the four hooded figures are lined up along the dais, a crude-looking cage set before them. The familiar form of Charlton is nearly unconscious and almost unrecognizable inside, curled on the floor in the fetal position and covered in that pitch black blood.

Ora makes her entrance then, emerging from the hallway with a woman who Eliot doesn't recognize. They're talking quietly, but their faces are grave, and just as he steps forward to try to hear whatever it is that they're saying, the sound of a scream pierces through the silence.

This one does not come from Charlton.

He catches sight of the creature from the corner of his eye as he flees for the door down the hall, and he slams his way inside the Cottage, breathing hard, and slumps against the wood at his back.

Penny looks up from the chair where he's planted across from Charlton and shrugs at Eliot's glare, a sandwich halfway to his mouth.

"What," he says, "you didn't get that that was sarcasm?"

"I don't suppose," Charlton says, "your backup plan had a backup plan?"

Even muffled by a mouth full of sandwich — in a move that was mostly prudence but more than a little petty bitch, Eliot had let Penny get a split second from his first bite before he'd snapped him away — it sounds like a strange mixture of hope and horror.

Eliot nods. "His better half, actually. Though it isn't so much a plan as it is a last-ditch effort."

It's also testing a theory. This time, he really hopes that he's wrong.

There's no shortage of Kadys to choose from — _snarky action hero_ is more or less her default state — but he calls up the first one that comes to mind; the one from outside a vault in the basement of a bank in a robbery turned rescue mission, who'd taken out a seasoned Battle Magician with nothing but her bare hands.

"Greetings," he says, scrawling _KADY, BANK HEIST_ across the top of the chalkboard and feeling exactly how strained his smile is. "Come with me."

It's tempting to take her right back to Blackspire — he's itching to know what Ora and her mystery gal pal had been gabbing so intently about — but he needs familiar ground for this. They step through the door and into a room they both know well, and he looks past the first few tables to a seat on the left side aisle and sees himself, satin-pajama-clad and slightly confused, at his Brakebills entrance exam.

Beside him, Bank Battle Kady snickers. "Nice glasses."

"I was _painfully_ hungover, my class schedule was clear on Monday mornings, and I thought I was walking into the _bathroom_ ," he says. "It's a miracle I had on pants."

"I don't actually care."

"Yeah." His eyes skip around the space, past his product-free hair and the sight of Henry Fogg sitting silently on the edge of the stage and the back of Bambi's perfectly highlighted head way up in the front row. "That's precisely the point."

She tosses her head and crosses her arms, fabulous hair flying. "You wanna tell me what we're doing here, Waugh?"

"Oh," he says, shooting for easy and even when he feels anything but, "just waiting."

"What the hell are we _waiting_ for?"

There are three shrieks this time, echoing in harmony like the world's most terrifying trio, and he pushes off the table to his feet as the room falls into shadow.

"For that."

The first creature comes up on her right, and Eliot has to fight every instinct telling him to flee. According to Charlton, in each of his previous memories the others had thrown themselves on every proverbial grenade, and headed these things off at the pass before they ever got anywhere near him.

Kady raises her hands, fingers slotted together and folded into one fist, and he shakes his head.

"Your magic won't work here."

She snorts and shakes her head just as the creature reaches out for her, then lets loose a right hook that lays the thing out flat.

"Look, I don't know what your deal is," she spits, eyeing the next one approaching, "but fuck this, and honestly, fuck you, too." It takes her all of thirty seconds to beat thing two with a heavy wooden chair until both of them are in pieces, and she tosses the broken remains aside in disgust and raises her hands as she backs away. "I'm outta here."

 _Shit_.

He was right after all. He has no easy outs left in this endeavor. He… has _totally_ lost track of the last creature in the room.

Prickly-cold awareness creeps up his spine, and he spins and stumbles back just in time to avoid the worst of a wide swipe of claws.

That said, _most_ is not _all_.

It rips a slash along the swell of his right shoulder, and in the split second before it starts seeping blood and the burn sets in, he has just enough time to think _damn, no centaur doctor with a giant dick for me_.

" _Jesus fuck_ ," he cries, clutching his injured arm. Kady is hovering near the exit, which is exactly where he would also like to be at this juncture, and Eliot waves with his good hand while the creature continues to herd him in the wrong direction. " _Hi_. Hate to be a bother, but —" he scrambles back as it swings again "— little help here?"

He hadn't known there was a human capable of a full body eyeroll until right this moment.

But she picks up a flagpole by the door and brings it down over her knee until it splinters and snaps clean in half. Then she comes up behind the creature, whistles through her teeth, and waits for it to turn before she whacks it across the goddamn skull.

"Or a lot of help," Eliot mumbles, ducking out of strike range.

A second chorus of shrieks sounds through the air, and he skids to a stop in the doorway and pivots back to the bloodbath.

"I believe that's our cue," he pants. "Let's _go_ , Lara Croft, there's a second wave incoming."

Kady laughs, twirling both pole pieces in her hands like batons. "Now why would I leave just when this is getting _fun_?"

"Good point," he says — because how the hell is he supposed to reason with that? — "Godspeed," and gets the fuck out of dodge.

Charlton is polishing off the second half of Penny's sandwich when Eliot throws himself through the door, and looks up, owlish and innocent, carefully wiping his hands with a napkin.

"How did it go?"

Eliot glares, drained of all energy and dripping blood on the hardwood. "Three guesses."

He drags himself across the room and drops onto the sofa, gingerly laying his injured arm across his lap. "Okay," he sighs, dropping his head to the back cushion and closing his eyes, "that's enough experimenting for me."

Judging from the sudden movement beside him and the way it shifts the seats, if he had to guess, he'd say that Charlton has actually _bounced_ a bit.

"That is wonderful news. Now that this is all over, we can remain safe here —"

"Oh no," Eliot says, waving halfheartedly with the hand it doesn't hurt to move, "the plan stands, Charlton. But as Penny so clearly demonstrated and Kady handily confirmed, I can't send just anyone out on decoy detail."

He sits up with a groan, feeling the slashed edges of his battle wound stretch as his arm shifts, and thinks of what Charlton had told him about the previous support squad, about Fen's fighting words and Margo's full-on attack. About Quentin volunteering to be a solo distraction so Eliot could escape, because _you sacrifice for the people you love_.

A random thought streaks through his head — he and Q are sort of a matched pair now, just one set of good shoulders between them.

"These people I'm picking to do this… I'm pretty sure they actually have to care about me. Or at least my mind has to believe they do. Sadly, that is not a very long list, so. Back to the drawing board."

Suddenly everything slides sideways, even though he's sitting down, and a tone sounds in his head that sets his teeth on edge and makes him squeeze his eyes shut tight.

The onslaught is over almost as soon as it began, but it leaves something fuzzy and familiar behind — he's felt this before, sudden and disorienting, though he can't quite recall when.

"Sorry," he finally says, his vision blurring until he can blink it away, "did you say something?"

Somewhere in there he'd forgotten he was wounded.

Charlton suggests that they _enlist_ _the gentleman Todd_ for additional first aid assistance, and it takes another cheap Target towel and two fingers of Tanqueray for Eliot to notice that the one he'd summoned is of _Massive Rager_ fame, complete with crown and pilfered velvet vest.

"Nope," he says. "Frankly, I'd rather bleed to death. Goodbye, Todd."

It's patched up well enough, torn skin tugged back together and held with a row of butterfly bandages. The pain itself is an altogether peculiar feeling — it doesn't hurt, per se, not the way a wound like this should. But it _aches_ , below the skin and through the bone, burrowed into the core of him beneath.

Now he's standing at the blackboard again, chalk in hand and Charlton at his elbow, reading _KADY, BANK HEIST_ over and over, as if repetition will make it make sense.

He knows they robbed a bank. He knows he was technically there — it's how the doppelbanger bit the big one and he'd ended up floating around in the ether before he rejoined his actual body. But he knows these things because it's what Bambi had told him once he was awake and in one piece again. Everything between her Danny Ocean delegation before and her sheer determination not to cry after is a dark, hazy blur, scattered with hastily sketched impressions of Penny and a pile of gold and Quentin performing _Rain Man_ -level math without so much as a scrap of scratch paper to speak of.

But there is absolutely no Kady.

It's less of a blank spot than Quentin with the box, and he can't quite decide which one is worse.

Charlton leans in closer, concentrating hard and whispering conspiratorially. "What are we looking for?"

"Nothing that's there anymore," Eliot mumbles, and steps forward to flip the board to the other side. He's greeted by a long list of struck-through memories, each of them something he'd rather forget, but erasing them is the best he can do.

He wipes the last of the writing away and dusts his hand on his ruined sleeve. " _Okay_. We need a small but mighty army made up of people who give more than a passing shit about me. Luckily, _small but mighty_ is exactly my type."

Naturally, he starts with Margo.

There's a veritable buffet to choose from on that front, but his first pick is an oldie but a goodie — the Margo who'd marched into Lazaro's loft to rage about grand theft life force. He adds the Julia who'd dragged herself out of hell to help him save Fillory from its own creators, then the Idri — not small, but very much mighty — who'd hacked down half a tree to win a duel and avoid an all-out war. And Quentin, in quick-draw triplicate; diving in front of a killing blow, setting off for a boat quest into the unknown, stepping steadily toward a monster with nothing but a deck of cards.

He stands back to evaluate, chalk pressed to his chin, and feels the wisp of a shiver up his spine. _Déjà vu_.

It's a good list. With any luck, it'll be enough.

Next to him, Charlton is also examining the new additions. "These are the memories of your friends you find suitably expendable?"

Eliot bristles, pulling a harsh breath in through his nose. "These are the memories of my friends that I'm betting on, Charlton. Hopefully I can find what I need without… _expending_ anyone else. But if that isn't the case, then… when this is all over, when I'm in control of my body and have full use of fucking brain, then I will get them all back. This is like some goddamn video game. You run out of lives, you reset and start again."

 _I think_ , he doesn't add. _I hope._

Charlton nods, thoughtful. "And of course, should you run through this list, you also have an entire lifetime full of other memories to choose from."

Suddenly the room is spinning again. But it isn't the strange sensation before, this muffled, lightheaded dizziness, it's the sudden rush of panic through his system.

Every memory on this board belongs to a living, breathing person, a person Eliot is trying to get back to. But memories of the Mosaic only exist in his head, dream-like, fuzzy and half-formed — the sound of Teddy's laughter, the shape of Arielle's smile, the soft, settled warmth of Quentin's happiness — and if they die here, there may not be a resurrection.

He swallows hard and sets the chalk aside. "No," he answers, "I don't."

Then he picks the piece of chalk back up, bends below the last memory on the list, and scribbles _MASSIVE RAGER TODD_ across the bottom of the board like a footnote.

Might as well be good for something.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Comments feed my soul, and you can find me on Tumblr [here](https://freneticfloetry.tumblr.com/).


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